DICE Questions Why People Like Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield fans have been getting a lot of attention from EA and DICE. With the shelving of Medal of Honor, Battlefield has become EA’s only go-to military shooter. Still, there’s a fan request that has gone unanswered.

Battlefield: Bad Company and its sequel teamed players up with a ragtag bunch of soldiers that aren’t the normal military-shooter heroes. The titles featured full single-player campaigns and multiplayer that is heralded by many fans as some of the series' best.

So, why hasn’t there been another entry in the franchise? “There's one thing that lingers with Bad Company that we've been asking ourselves: What is it that the people really liked about Bad Company?" DICE general manager Karl Magnus Troedsson told Eurogamer.

Troedsson says that he and his team can’t put their fingers on what it is that people loved about that branch of the brand. “It's hard for people to articulate what that is, which is actually hard for us,” he says. “It would be hard to remake something like that. Can we do it? Of course. We have our theories when it comes to the multiplayer."

Our TakePlaytesting isn’t a new concept, and I can’t imagine that the data from the Bad Company games isn’t available. Additionally, given the popularity, it might even be worth bringing in fans of Battlefield 4 and Hardline (once that game is out) to play Bad Company 2’s multiplayer in a focus-testing environment to understand what hits home about it. It strikes me as odd that the studio boss doesn’t know what made two of its titles so beloved by fans.

Characters with interesting personalities that have entertaining banter, instead being generic military hero dudes like recent BF games. I also liked actually having narration in the single-player.
I also enjoyed that it took more shots to kill an enemy in multiplayer.

To me I thought the campaign mode was where all the fun was at. The levels had a open world feel to them and the main characters were never obnoxious. I also think that the Frostbite engine was better engineered back then and it didn't feel scripted. For the multiplayer, I favored the more linear maps. They just seemed to work well with Conquest and the other game modes.

I enjoyed the bad company series because they stuck to open world environments for the single player missions. They werent trying to be serious either, which is what gave it its charm. Lets face it, battlefield cant do campaigns like call of duty or halo, so why not take a comedic approach? BF3 and 4's campaigns were quite boring in my opinion(I cant imagine Hardline being much better), so they are in need of another run through comedy and fun.

We like it because both had a fun campaign, particularly Bad Company 2's. I loved the hilarious one liners from both games. My favorite being "Sometimes even Budda has to kick some ass" They were 10 times better than BF3's campaign.
The only problem both games had was bad post launch support for multiplayer and limited ranking systems. If BC2 had had BF3's amount of maps and the robust ranking system, it would have been near perfect.

I like Bad Company Single player because they're all funny. In terms of actual story it's ok-ish but the characters are what make BC good. For multiplayer it's all about the map design. Maps were built for modes instead of recycled for them. You could also blow everything up and as simple as it sounds, one hole in a wall would change the game. A lot of time it would change how the game is played more than the levolution stuff in BF4.

"All of these fans are shouting in our faces their reasons for liking the games, but we can't seem to put our finger on why they like the games..."
I can only hope they're feigning ignorance to hide a Bad Company 3, and that they're not actually this ignorant.

I loved the humour in the open world feeling campaign and how it was just fun, i loved how the guns felt and everything was destrucible unlike the new ones plus it just felt like a battle and people were actually using teamwork it just doesn't feel like and all out war anymore like it used to

Personally, I absolutely loved the humor of the first Bad Company. It was a fantastic black comedy/anti-hero story and game. The squad weren't heroes and they weren't fighting for a noble cause. They were dumbazzes and chickenshites trying to find a pile of mercenary gold to line their own pockets. There were so many great lines that made me laugh out loud and hilarious characters, too, starting with the dictator whose name I can't remember. The gameplay was great, too, obviously, but for me, the humor is what made it really stand out compared to other FPSs. Kudos to whoever wrote that game.
The second game was a huge disappointment for me on that front. It just wasn't as funny as the first game, because--in my opinion--they put the squad in a hero story while still treating them as anti-heroes. So the humor seemed more forced and just kind of dumb, in my opinion. It was still fun to play, but I was really let down by the change in tone.
That said, everyone has a different sense of humor, and none of the reviews I read seemed to share my view. But that's my two cents, anyway. Bring back whoever wrote the first game, DICE!!!!

Heck, all DICE needs to do is look at the comments section on this article. People here are being pretty specific about what they like and didn't like about the BC games as well as what separated them from other Battlefield titles.

In this comments section alone you're likely to have about fifty people articulating exactly why they liked it. DICE knows why it's loved, they're just playing dumb because emphasizing things like humor and personality goes against EA's established narrative of needing everything to be boring and serious.

The single player has likable characters, some the other games sorely lack. They also play out like an early 90's/late 80's buddy cop movie which I find far more appealing than a Micheal Bay style campaign.

as a longtime Battlefield vet, I can say without hesitation that BFBC2 was easily the best in the series, both for single player and MP. For single player, everyone here got it right. It had great characters that were entertaining, and technically the game design was visually stunning for the time (the fog and sunlight pushing through the jungle was pretty mind blowing at the time) and the surprise of building destruction, which had always been non-existent in shooters at that time. And let me make this clear for any developers reading this. It wasn't levolution or any other buzzword. It was coming upon a grouping of huts and whatnot and being able to level the whole damn area. Nothing was left behind but the dirt on the ground. Sure not every area was like this, but some villages were completely destructible, and in a weird way that gave it some gravity. Do that in some of the next games areas.
As for the MP, it's simple. The game ran more solidly than any other MP at the time, and player classes had clear roles defined. In today's Battlefield, there's crossover and what I would call moderate infantry, where the Engineer and Assault class are separated by the repair tool but not much else. Giving the recon class a crapload of weapons for long range combat (sniper rifle, mortar strike call in, etc) made it clear that recon was meant for distance. Assault offered in your face weaponry, and engineers had defensive weapons that protected them while they flew, drove, or repaired vehicles. That alongside a solid consistent crash free experience made your console MP shooter a competitor to COD in the first place. I promise if you had released BF3 or BF4 instead of BFBC2, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Respect where respect is due. That game made your brand on consoles.

I love the large sandbox levels even if there wasn't much to do in them and the more humorous tone brought by the character's personalities. I personally liked Bad Company 1's campaign more than BC2's but I liked BC2's multiplayer better.